


Birthday

by Souliebird



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, No Dialogue, No Romance, Pre- Under The Hood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4058092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souliebird/pseuds/Souliebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was his birthday, and Jason needed to see who would come to remember him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday

The wind gave an angry howl and Jason pulled his jacket tighter around himself. A storm was looming on the horizon, threatening to give Gotham dark skies for at least a week. Jason found it somewhat poetic; to let nature clean the streets before he came in and cleaned it in a different sense. 

He should have been inside, somewhere warm, planning for his take over. There were still dozens of little details to hash out before he even thought of going out into the city at night. He should have been in his apartment, with a nice cold beer and hot Chinese food, double checking what he had already implemented for the nth time. 

Jason should not have been in the graveyard, standing in the shadows of a mausoleum, watching his headstone. But he was, despite every part of his being telling him to leave. Jason had been rooted to the spot since sunrise, only moving to follow the shadows. 

It was his birthday, and Jason needed to see who would come to remember him. 

It was silly, Jason knew. He had been dead for years, but a part deep inside of him, the last remains of the boy he had been before, needed to know someone still cared about him. 

Jason knew Bruce would not come. He had not expected the man to come at all, but if he was honest with himself, there had been a small hope that he was wrong. That hope was destroyed before he had even left his apartment; the news had shown footage of Batman in Hong Kong. Bruce wasn't in Gotham to even passingly glance at the graveyard.

Alfred had arrived promptly at nine o'clock in the morning with a small wreath of flowers Jason did not recognize. He watched as the older man cleaned off the grave with great care, removing any leaves and twigs the wind had blown onto it, without actually stepping on the grave. He leaned the wreath against the headstone after it was free of debris, then placed gloved hand on the marker. He stood for a minute with his head bowed before leaving just as quietly as he had come. 

The affair had taken less than five minutes, but it had made Jason's heart swell. It was the first real non-'I want to hit things' emotion Jason had felt since he had arrived in the city. Alfred had always meant the world to Jason, and he was slightly ashamed of himself for thinking no one was going to visit. 

Fat rain drops began to fall around Jason hours after Alfred had left and an emptiness began to fill him. Dick hadn't even come to Jason's funeral, expecting him to come to visit his grave was more far fetched than expecting Bruce to. Jason suspected it was harder for Barbara to get around in the rain and there was no walkway where her wheelchair wouldn't get stuck in the mud, not that they had ever been particularly close in the first place. There was no one else in Gotham that Jason could think of who would even know what day it was, no one Jason could think of who would bother to remember him.

But Jason's feet wouldn't move. 

The skies blacked over, promising a down pour any moment, and Jason found himself wondering why he was tormenting himself. Maybe it was to crush the child inside of him, to prove to himself one final time that what he was doing was right. That his plans to do what the Bat couldn't were justified because the so called Family did not care when it lost a member. 

Jason was torn from his brooding when he saw a thin figure approach his headstone. It was a teenage boy, wearing a too bright red sweatshirt and even with his hood pulled up, Jason could see black bangs sticking out from underneath. The boy stood on Jason's grave, the opposite of what Alfred had done, and stared down at it. Jason watched him talk, but he was too far away to hear the words, and the rain was making it difficult to read his lips. He spoke to the headstone for what felt like forever, and Jason watched him, fascinated. 

Timothy Drake, the third Robin, Jason's replacement, bent down after almost an hour and righted the wreath that Alfred had left. Jason hadn't even realized the wind had knocked it over. The teenager reached out, looking like he was going to touch Jason's headstone, but his fingers came just short of the act. He quickly stood and hurried off in the direction of the city. 

Jason wanted to chase him, demand to know why he had come, to beat it out of him. He needed to understand why the teenage,r who Jason had come to despise, had done something so intimate as come to his grave. 

Why had someone Jason had never met come to show him respect when his own so called father and brother hadn't? 

Jason felt his feet move, but instead of following Robin, they lead him back to his bike, parked blocks away. As he donned his helmet, he quietly decided to find out when the new Boy Wonder's birthday was. 

~*~

 

The sun was shining far too brightly and Jason felt he was going to melt in the summer heat. He gave a sad smile at the sight in front of him, then with a soft sigh, crouched down to carefully prop the wreath of red flowers back up against Timothy Drake's headstone.


End file.
